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THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE

In
the eighth chapter of the Book of John, Jesus Christ makes two statements in
rapid succession. They encapsulate in a few phrases wisdom to cure many Christians
of the anxieties that afflict the conservative movement. In 8:31, Jesus says,
“If you continue in My word, you really are My disciples. You will know the
truth, and the truth will set you free.” A few lines latter, Jesus adds,
“Everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin.”

I
know of other professors, and of people who know of still others, who are in
similar purges but who have to stay silent because of confidentiality gags. Then
you must account for all the adjuncts like Mary Grabar who never got
tenure-track jobs, earlier exiles like John Zmirak who got out of the academy
for better lives, and the many conservatives in grad school who sold their
souls to liberals, ran out of the hallowed halls screaming, or were chased out
by the usual mobs of screeching race hucksters, homofascists, feminazis,
climate-change cabalists, and Marxophonies before they could get their
doctorates.

When
the dust settles on this sandstorm, there will be many, many, many, many academics on the list of casualties. Seven
in one week are but the tip of a big iceberg untouched by global warming.

Okay, the Time to Stay Calm is
Over, Conservatives!

We
don’t know how many conservatives the liberal academy is surgically removing in
what can no longer be denied or ignored for what it is—a concerted putsch. This
is the big political story of our era: money, propaganda, conspiracies, corruption,
fraud, sex, lies, and hidden bodies.

This
is bigger than McCarthyism, and way more expensive. It has involved financial
corruption, tuition-based price-gauging, nepotism, and conspiracy to use
publicly funded charities (universities) to advance one political party and
stifle dissent. Besides persecuting political opponents, academia has corrupted
research, knowingly spread profligate falsehoods (especially about sex, gender,
and race), and defrauded millions of college graduates who went into debt for
an overpriced education that left them dysfunctional, unemployable, mentally
unstable, and brainwashed.

We
have witnessed a criminal transfer of wealth from hard-working poor and
middle-class families to fund managers and university administrators swimming
in a deluxe swamp of untaxed endowments that are not being used to advance the common good.

Save the Evidence-Because It’s
Really Bad for the Left

The
left perpetrated this and must be held accountable, not only through shaming
and a thorough accounting for the history books, but also, through some kind of
massive restitution. The liberal corruption of academia coincided with enormous
increases in tuition and student debt (discussed in my
book).

Some
estimates of student loan debt range between one and two trillion dollars, but
this does not count all the money funneled into university tax shelters, which
are not being taxed, and all the payments to colleges for tuition, books, fees,
and other expenses, in exchange for a faulty product people were forced to buy
through false advertising and a crooked credentialing system. A massive part of
the nation’s economy—and of countless families’ budgets—went into a black hole
of waste, creating a drag on our country’s economic growth and productivity,
which nobody has yet fully theorized. And the people who did this were
insufferably smug and completely wrong about everything, on top of all that. (Who
will do a study on this when all the economists are paid by or scared of
universities?)

Several
months ago, when I came out with a book on higher education called “Wackos
Thugs & Perverts,” people thought the title was outrageous. Now, as
Berkeley has seen three riots and three guest speakers blocked by politically
correct outrages, the harsh title seems almost too gentle. Isn’t there
something deeper going on?

Everything is getting worse every day. Remember when it was only conservatives
who saw their freedom crushed and they were generally deemed deserving of such
treatment? I remember. I remember when even conservative watchdogs thought lots
of us who came forward with stories were just loonies because why else would so
many people in the academy think we were crazy?

At
last, some who caviled are now realizing what is afoot. The AAUP responded to
my SOS calls in 2014 with unworried emails, saying there was no tenure or
academic-freedom issue there. They had the usual routine down, which they use, presumably,
when being forced to deal with a kook: “My job is to make you go away, here’s a
cookie; this gentleman with the holstered Taser and a security badge will see
you out the back way. Good afternoon, Sir.” Now the AAUP is actually starting to sweat (too
late to help me, of course—I left that job.)

But Conservatives Need to Get
Serious

We
can’t get it twisted, though; large numbers of conservatives were either
complicit with the racket or contributed to it by their own foolishness. In 2015,
I remember trekking to Capitol Hill to meet with Republican lawmakers about
academic freedom, with the explicit aim of alerting them to the Higher
Education Act and provisions therein, which would enable them to intervene in
persecution cases like mine.

After
months of trying to get appointments, my friend and I arrived to be told no
lawmakers could meet with us, but instead two charming twentysomethings would
greet us in their dungarees and flats, with mugs of coffee and yellow legal
pads, the pages of which I am sure did not survive five minutes after my
departure. These were interns or clerks or something—I wasn’t quite sure.

They
told me they were concerned and keeping watch over academic freedom, mostly by
reading stories about Laura Kipnis. Prof. Kipnis was a liberal Northwestern
professor who wrote a column defending the practice of professors sleeping with
students, and alluding to an ongoing rape investigation with dismissive
comments about the (unnamed) accusers. As a result of this, the individuals who
had raised the rape charges filed a Title IX retaliation charge against Prof.
Kipnis, which resulted in her being investigated for two months and then cleared
of all charges. I asked the Hill interns, “are you aware of other cases, for
instance conservatives opposed to homosexuality, where people were actually
investigated for years and then lost their jobs?”

They
replied something to the effect of, “I am sure such cases exist.”

My
friend stepped in to say, “It would be a very sad thing if you guys diddled
around talking about academic freedom while Dr. Lopez, who’s been under
investigation for 9 months already, had to leave his job in California, and
nothing got done about this. Think of all the others who will lose their jobs.”

The writing could not have been darker on the wall than it was on that day. But
the Hill interns said I should email them with any updates (I did, with no
response) and they would keep an eye on things and let the appropriate
lawmakers know they met with me. My friend and I got phone calls with various
staffers over the next year, with nothing other than repetitive references to
the case of Laura Kipnis. “We sent a letter to Northwestern about Laura Kipnis’s
case,” one told me. I responded, with growing unease, “great! She seems a great
lady! But she was cleared of all charges and has a job. Do you think you might
send a letter to my college?” “We don’t
want to make things worse,” they said.

“You
need hearings!” I was screaming like a crazy person screaming, “soylent green
is people!” My dean, who would be named the head of the Clinton Global Initiative
on campus and got elected to be
president of the National Council of Deans of Arts and Sciences (which is
interesting since she is dean of neither arts nor sciences), methodically
loaded up my personnel file with reprimand letters and procedural annoyances
until at last I decided the only fate worse than losing tenure at Cal State
Northridge would be having tenure at
Cal State Northridge. But as I was on my way out, I had some consolation that
finally Congress was going to hold hearings about academic freedom.

The “hearings”

Professor
Robert George, distinguished with his grey locks and gleaming spectacles, appeared
before Congress alongside a bunch of his students and a leftist who was told he
could not hang up Bernie Sanders posters at Georgetown.

They
spoke about the importance of free thought and exchange of ideas, etc., etc.,
etc., while I proceeded to pull out most of my hair screaming at the wall, “this
is it? These are your hearings? These
people aren’t about to be fired. When will we talk about defunding the colleges
and subpoenaing all the creepy Medusa figures in the administration who keep
landing millions of dollars in grants and harassing conservative Christians
until they leave?”

Get ready for the death toll-but
stop diddling

On
many campuses that pushed out conservatives, the routine was frighteningly
similar. Well aware of FIRE and other groups devoted to academic freedom, the
administrators had learned, by a few years ago, that they could not attack
conservatives by openly repudiating their conservatism. They either frame them
for some unrelated procedural violation (falsifying files if they have to), or
else drag them into a complicated investigation that they know will not survive
an academic-freedom challenge, but will likely lead to the victim breaking a rule
like confidentiality, notification, disclosure, or non-retaliation.

Because
this was how the system worked and still works, countless people live now under
investigation, facing certain ousters. They are hostages but we do not know
where they are, since they are cowed by confidentiality rules, gag orders, and
the observation that courts are siding with liberal oppressors.

Reality Check

If
you want to save academic freedom, be aware of some hurtful truths.

First,
conservatives dropped the ball. Nothing they’ve done worked and if they don’t
try new approaches, this will become even worse.

Second,
no painless strategy can fix this. You love homecoming, reunions, the football
games, and the friends you made in college. You may have nostalgia for all you
learned and the warm professors who guided you into adulthood. But those charms
chain you to an oppressive system that threatens our democracy.

Universities
are utterly hostile to your values and to God—even the vast majority of
religious colleges. They got this bad because they rely on a steady stream of
money that has never slowed or stopped, no matter how outraged the nation
became. The only strategy that will work will be financial.
The federal government must cease all public funding for colleges and
universities, save for trade or vocational programs and seminaries (which are
vocational). Our nation’s debt matches, roughly, the enormous amounts of cash
that this corrupt system has funneled out of the functioning economy into their
twisted Wonderland of emotional torture, sexual depravity, and fiscal
recklessness.

People
you love in the university system will experience pain if this system is to be
fixed. Grants, backing of student loans, and tax exemptions on donations must
all cease. Forget the conservative refrain of local and state control—the federal
government got thoroughly entangled in all this and must take the lead. These
are not non-profit charities so that loophole smacked of fraud from the
beginning. In the case of most Catholic colleges, the non-profit status
actually constituted charities fraud since the church has not yet reversed its
stance on chastity yet these Catholic colleges not only fund homosexual social
groups but even persecute people who defend Biblical sexuality on their own
campuses.

Were
such a strategy pursued, we would see massive job losses, the abolition of
tenure, the closing of many struggling colleges, and cuts in pay. The wasteful
and parasitic administrative class would have to go, causing painful
unemployment to possibly millions of people who have made their living off the
fat of this monstrous system. So many good people with good intentions would be
hurt in the process. For that we must grieve.

But
I left my job and quit tenure. It can be done. The universities and their
workers brought this infernal crisis on themselves. They had adequate warnings
and have no excuse for why they let the situation get this far.

Let go of “academic freedom”

Lastly,
you must realize that this is not about academic freedom in the way we have
discussed it thus far.

If you are truly conservative, your end goal is not a state of academic
freedom, which would imply a situation in which all ideas are expressed and
allowed on campus forums, and nobody is blocked from or suffers retaliation for
their statements. Such a world would lack all discernment. It would be without
virtue, without distinctions, constantly doubting its morals, and
incapacitating the triumph of any position over others even in matters of grave
importance. It would be demonic.

If
you are conservative, and especially if you are Christian, what you seek is the
Truth. The Truth is from God and exists as wisdom un-darkened by confusion and
sinful thoughts. The Truth is not only what is,
but what is right. With our
imperfect minds, we cannot rush to decide what Truth is. We cannot censor
competing views, except when we can show certainty. But academic freedom within
such a system is a means to an end, a tool to build our monument to the Truth. In debates eventually we must acknowledge Truth where
it lies, not remain uncommitted.

The
left became horrendous because the left was wrong. Their prescriptions about
improving race relations did not work because they were wrong. They were wrong
about homosexuality and now we see the falsehoods of the LGBT movement growing
more arrogant and multiplying as people who were celebrated for their errors
now see further false affirmations as their entitlement, and Truth as an attack on their fragile sense of self.

The
Truth is on our side. Now as we see all of higher education declare war on
Truth, and on us because we championed it, we have nothing to lose. Do not hide
behind caveats of academic freedom, as if all we want is to be given a chance
to speak, a slush fund to bring Ann Coulter for a speech, a seat on a panel
beside people peddling lies—that is not what we want. We want the left to stop
lying. We want to proclaim the Truth so people see it, and stop listening to
the left, and start listening to God. If this means that academia crashes and
turns into ruins of a lost past, do not be mournful. Rejoice, for God has given
us victory. Do not worry for tenure or being published somewhere prestigious or
stuffing your resume with awards and grants. God gave you legs to walk and a
tongue to shout His Word from the rooftops.

Academia
is lost. We will never get our desks and library carrels back. Harvard will not
ask us to speak what we know from behind a podium with a brilliant seal while
the future leaders of America applause and smile. We have won our freedom.
Enjoy it.